Quebec’s soccer federation is digging in its heels after being reprimanded for refusing to allow turban-wearing youths to play with the rest of the children, and slimy politicians bent on separatism couldn’t be happier.

After refusing to allow religious headgear in youth soccer and being banned from national play by the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA), the Quebec Soccer Federation thumbed its nose at the issue and says it will stand alone. Well, not alone. Because when it comes to the question of limiting religious accommodations in Quebec, there are a cadre of politicians who smell points to score.

There is something rotten in the province of Quebec, with the ridiculous and embarrassing decision to ban children wearing turbans from playing in provincial soccer leagues.

But the province has doubled-down on the issue, changing it from a secret sovereigntist gauntlet-dropping into an open and transparent one.

The Canadian Press reports the federation has declared it will maintain its controversial ban on turbans, patkas and keskis despite being suspended from the CSA.

The Canadian body has called for every provincial association to allow religious headgear in league play and all but Quebec agreed. Some have expressed their disgust at Quebec’s refusal.

The Quebec Soccer Federation (QSF) said it will not bend based on safety reasons, arguing that soccer's world body, FIFA, has not fully-approved the wearing of turbans. However, FIFA says Quebec should take its cues from the national body. So that argument has become total bunk. What is left is only pride and dirty politics.

The CSA says it will maintain the ban until Quebec lifts its ban. Quebec says it will happily remain outside of Canadian jurisdiction.

Doesn't this sound more than a little like how separatists would love the war to be waged on a much larger scale?

"I believe that the Quebec federation had the right to establish their own regulations," Premier Pauline Marois said on Tuesday. "They are autonomous and they are not liable to the Canadian federation."

So there it is; the Parti Quebecois' grand motto and overarching separatist intentions being shoehorned into a debate on youth soccer.

The National Post's Chris Selley concludes similarly, writing that Quebec politicians believe points can be scored by opposing religious accommodation.

This strategy of inventing or cultivating grievances with Ottawa and the Rest of Canada, then hawking them to Quebecers as proof of their own unrealized misery, is so dreary, negative and insultingly transparent as to make one pine for the finger tenting scheming of Jacques Parizeau.

Separatists are free to push and rally for an independent Quebec. It comes at the cost of national unity and it distracts the House of Commons from more important issues, but that's the price tag we have been stuck paying in Canada.

But what is rotten is when that battle is forced upon children who want to play soccer. When members of a youth sport federation receive their talking points from politicians will slick, unwavering ambitions.

The Parti Quebecois thinks it is winning political points by creating divisions on the youth soccer field. It is politics at its worst and it is sickening.

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Just a reminder that the Canadian Soccer Association has suspended the Quebec association

"The Canadian Soccer Association has red carded a provincial association over its refusal to let turban-wearing children play, announcing the Quebec organization will be suspended until the ban is overturned."

The team, based in Chelsea, Que., is planning to don the Sikh headgear to protest the idiocy of the Quebec Soccer Federation’s turban ban.

We play most of our games against Ontario teams. Or we did until we were informed that we are banned until further notice, following the Canadian Soccer Association’s suspension of the QSF.

Another 20 youth teams from Ontario have also just discovered they will not, after all, be playing in Montreal this weekend because the soccer authorities won’t grant them travel permits.

The Quebec provincial association, abetted by the entire provincial political class, has decided that wearing a turban is a clear and present danger to anyone in the vicinity.

I have played soccer for 40 years. I know danger on the field. I used to play against men called Dingo in parts of Glasgow you wouldn’t walk around in broad daylight, unless armed with a nuclear missile.

The thing we can all agree on is that nobody should “impose their values” on anyone else. The Quebec Soccer Federation should not impose its values on Sikh children and others whose religion commands them to wear a turban while playing. The Canadian Soccer Association should not impose its values on the QSF. And FIFA should not impose its values, whatever these might happen to be, on the CSA. Have I left anyone out?

Let’s dismiss the canard that it’s about safety. Footballers routinely wear bandages and continue playing if they suffer a head-wound. Petr Cech, the veteran Chelsea goalie, wears headgear in the English Premier League every week FOR PROTECTION.

The only other semi-coherent explanation I’ve heard was offered in Maclean’s by a blogger called Simon Delorme. He suggested that the ruling was about abiding by the rules, including the regulations about the uniform. Soccer players don’t wear baseball caps or ski goggles, he pointed out.

“Just as there are religious values, there are sports values,” he wrote. This universality guarantees that whether in Marseilles or Mumbai, “anyone can join in, anyone can play…”

Can anyone see the flaw in an argument that continued in this vein, as it slowly circled the plug-hole?

In actual fact, there is nothing in law four that says you can’t wear a soft-brimmed cap — in fact, many goalies do, in order to shield their eyes from the sun. The rule says a player must not use equipment or wear anything that is dangerous to him (or her) self or any other player, including jewelry. We have already established that a tightly wound cloth is not hazardous, short of the player unfurling it and wrapping it around a referee’s neck in a murderous rage.

In actual fact, there is nothing in law four that says you can’t wear a soft-brimmed cap — in fact, many goalies do, in order to shield their eyes from the sun. The rule says a player must not use equipment or wear anything that is dangerous to him (or her) self or any other player, including jewelry
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I don’t particularly buy the idea that the QSF move is motivated by some deep-seated francophone antipathy to any kind of religious display. I think it is much less nuanced than any complex arguments about identity and reasonable accommodation.

Rather, I suspect it reflects official Quebec’s feverish distemper to control everything in its own small fishpond, like an unarmed North Korea.

The QSF made a decision that was self-evidently absurd and indefensible. The Canadian Soccer Association could not sit on the fence, so it brought down its own sanction.

Tom Mulcair, the NDP leader, spoke to the QSF and in a speech Tuesday in Ottawa, hinted that a compromise was in the offing. But that was before the intervention of Quebec’s politicians, including Premier Pauline Marois, all pandering to the lowest common denominator. Political engagement hardened attitudes as the turban ban was presented as a microcosm of federal-provincial relations and English Canada’s desire to impose its will on legitimate Quebec exceptionalism.

Except, of course, the QSF is a creature of the CSA in a way that the province is not when it comes to relations with Ottawa.

This sad chapter seems entirely in keeping with other bone-headed moves made by Quebec’s leaders just because they can.

The province’s grievance culture seems to elevate people who, because they want to boss other people around, are, ipso facto, least suited to do it.

This sad chapter seems entirely in keeping with other bone-headed moves made by Quebec’s leaders just because they can

One Quebec referee recently told me I couldn’t play wearing shorts with pockets, again for safety reasons. Protests that I was hardly likely to trip over my own pockets were not met with good grace and he eventually decided that the game would survive without my further involvement.

This idiot is probably a big cheese in the QSF, reveling in a suddenly improved safety record now that hundreds of Sikh kids and, yes, middle-aged hackers are playing in their backyards.

Quebec will be a lot better off when it realizes that the people who want to run the province — the overly officious grievance junkies who think the law is there to boss people around — should, on no account, be allowed to do so.

In the meantime, I will learn how to tie a turban. We’re all Sikhs now.

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